Once there was a girl called Victoria. She was a little thing, a waif, all knees and elbows, and brown hair like the soft crayon scribbles she used to make on her colouring pad, too exuberant to stay between the lines. Her Mum and dad used to call her “Vicky”, but they didn’t call her anything at all anymore.
There had been meaning in those three words once upon a time: Vicky, mum, dad. Vicky was too young to understand what those words really meant even when she could remember. They were more a feeling that wrapped them together in a tight cuddle. But their meaning was out of reach and fading, fading, fading, like forgotten toys in a sandpit. Now her father rocked from foot to foot, head down, facing the wall, while her mother swayed, eyes fixed on the naked light bulb shining above her head, bleaching her brown eyes milky white. And Vicky herself looked at her parents through the strands of lank, unwashed hair, swaying a little.
Drool leaked from Vicky’s cracked lips in a long, shiny strand, and she became dimly aware of hunger. A tiny, agitated monster in the pit of her stomach, the feeling grew. She blinked as if waking, although her eyes never closed for sleep anymore. A soft sibilant hiss simmered in her ears. Vicky knuckled at the little shells on the side of her head. The hissing didn’t go away but the idea that she was hungry became clearer, and her distended tummy—beneath her sky-blue t-shirt and dirty green shorts—grumbled in agreement.
Wandering into the kitchen, the hissing in her head was joined by the buzzing of flies. The kitchen was dark, even though it was light outside, because the sand dunes had crept closer across the back garden months ago. First, all the plants died. Then the grass. A layer of sand drifted over it all. The lights in the house didn’t work anymore, but out of a habit she was no longer conscious of, she flicked the switch standing up on her tip toes. The kitchen remained dark when she opened the fridge. Disturbed from their feast, more flies buzzed. Vicky reached in and lifted out a plate of raw sausages. The insects took flight and bothered about her. The meat of the sausage moved under its transparent skin. Hundreds of thin white worms wriggled and coiled. Another of those shadowy memories, dancing meaninglessly on the back of her skull, slithered to the fore: Daddy held her hand. The shop was bright and white and smelled funny. Not dirty, just funny. A big man, fat, with a moustache and teeth too small for his mouth, handed over a big package of sausages wrapped in greaseproof paper. The memories were pictures with no voice to tell her what they meant. No mummy or daddy to explain.
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Vicky slid the plate onto the table and hopped up on a chair, kneeling to be tall enough to eat from the table. Taking a sausage in her fist, she bit off the end. Thin white worms dropped back onto the plate as Vicky chewed open mouthed. They coiled and flopped around, the colour of pus squeezed from a teenager’s blackheads. Staring at nothing, she slowly chewed the rest of her raw and rotting snake of meat.
Finished, Vicky put the plate back into the fridge, flies orbiting like angry fairies. She turned off the dead light that never shone and returned to her swaying parents. There, tethered to the shadow of habit, she paused as if in silent conversation, before walking to the downstairs hall, head down, hair over her face. She opened the front door and stepped out onto the street.
Light drifts of sand mottled the pavement and road. Outside, the hissing was louder. With their boarded up and cracked panes, the gormless terraced houses stared at her. She ignored them, like she and her parents ignored everything else except the hunger in their tummies and the hissing in their heads. Hunger abated, for now, Vicky followed the hissing, which was always louder nearer the dunes, especially the playground.
